Chameleonic Camouflage

[Shroom Man 777]

In my sci-fi universe, I'm giving a few ground forces "adaptive camouflage", where they can change their color to blend with the environment. But someone pointed out that this would give infrared sensors a field day, so I had to limit it - so the cham-camo will only optimize its color schemes every once in a while, when there are drastic changes in surrounding color.

But then, I was wondering - do chameleons face the same problem? Do they emit a great deal of heat when changing their skin pigmentation?

[Lord of the Abyss]

Probably not - chameleons are cold blooded. You might give your forces stealthed heat sinks - either they project heat away from likely observers, or they have some sort of limited heat storage ability.

[Mr Bean]

Or simply make the adaptive camouflag an active feature

IE on changing areas your camo weares can change the camo to reflect the surroundings, either from a varity of pre-sets or taking a picture of the local area then changing the pattern.

Explain it away as some sort of highly advanced flexible projection material with the power sources and picture threads spread far enough apart as to be no brighter than standard human. Toss in an option heat reflective underlayer for anti-thermal work.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Something I copied from the web recently ( from Telegraph News, no link, sorry ) :

Not seeing is believing for invisibility cloak
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 01/03/2005)
The cap of darkness possessed by Hades, god of the underworld, was possibly the first. Later came the Romulan cloaking device from Star Trek and Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.

Now, two electronics engineers claim to have brought those mythical and fictional creations a step closer to reality after announcing proposals for a "shield" that makes objects disappear by reducing the light scattered from them. The idea, which does not seem to break any of the laws of physics, was explained yesterday in the journal Physical Review E. Dr Andrea Alù and Prof Nader Engheta, of the University of Pennsylvania, rely on plasmons, ripples in the oceans of electrons at the surface of every object, to achieve their effect. If made to oscillate at the correct frequency, the energy from the light is harvested by the plasmon and converted back to light, cancelling the light scattered by the object and rendering it "nearly invisible to an observer".
"Our proposal is still a theoretical concept, and we have not begun to consider building a 'practical' plasmonic cover," Prof Engheta said yesterday. "There are still important issues to be resolved, but the concept is very exciting."
Although the current proposal could not be used to hide people or vehicles from vision it may help a stealth bomber to deceive radar, although the complex shape of the aircraft would present difficulties. Most previous attempts at invisibility work more like camouflage, using screens that are coloured to match the background, a trick used in nature by squid, flatfish and flounders. Canadian and German military researchers are developing a chameleon-like armoured vehicle capable of altering its appearance on the battlefield and the British defence research agency QinetiQ is working along similar lines.

A future version of this might be what you want.

[Shroom Man 777]

You're a genius!

BTW, here's my article:

Encyclopedia Galactica > Science & Technology > Military Technology > Ground Warfare Technology > Chameleonic Camouflage

In an age where virtually anything can possess sensors, most would think that standard color-based camouflage would be an irrelevant and useless expenditure of military money. But that could not be any further from the truth because whether in blistering desert wastelands, icy frostbitten moons or jungles teeming with dangerous wildlife, camouflage can and will mean the difference between life and death. And this is where this bit of technology comes in. Chameleonic camouflage is the result of years of painstaking experiments done by contracted laboratories in the Toraamal Republic and the T-3.

The compounds that compose the chameleonic camouflage are individually useless, but when combined with nanotech forms reflective pigmentation cells that are capable of automatically mimicking surrounding colors to an amazingly accurate degree. This substance, called ChamCamo by its developers, is a wonder. Its capabilities are unprecedented and the manufacturing costs have proven to be surprisingly acceptable (even not considering all the money saved in the form of paint jobs, etc.). In fact, after the successful field testing done by the TorMil (Toraamal Military), ChamCamo was immediately implemented on all USE, LFW and Republic planetary military assets, therefore giving the human and Zigonian militaries a simple but deadly (and not to mention money saving) edge over other militaries which have not yet integrated this system.

In the recent years, after all the contracts, investors and buyers, chameleonic camouflage has found another niche - but this time not for military purposes. Toned down ChamCamo pigmentation cells are now an increasingly popular fashion trend in primary human and Zigonian worlds. They can be bought by anyone with enough money and can be configured via wristwatch into colors of all sorts, from plain white to random psychedelic patterns (popular in discos and parties).

Significant portions of the money earned from these sales are used to fund more projects for the Terran and Zigonian militaries, such as research into more effective camouflage. The latest version of military ChamCamo is computer controlled, and optimizes the camouflage’s extremely high adaptability to the maximum sum of surrounding colors while preventing the camouflage from constantly transforming at every moment, a process that emits a considerable quantity of heat, which in turn necessitates the usage of heat sinks and heat reflection materials. This is done by either factory pre-sets or the ChamCamo computer taking in the environment and generating an optimized camouflage scheme.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ghetto edit:

That "you're a genius" thing is directed at Bean, since when I was typing the reply, I hadn't seen Abyss' post. Will read... now!

[Lord of the Abyss]

Ghetto edit:

That "you're a genius" thing is directed at Bean, since when I was typing the reply, I hadn't seen Abyss' post. Will read... now!

Awww, I'm crushed.

( I thought my greatness had finally been realized... )

[Shroom Man 777]

Woah, that's actually frickin' cool. Cloaking devices, here we come! Though that's not what I'm looking for - I'm looking for chameleonic camouflage, not invisibility devices. And turns out I was right, fucking with the EM spectrum or some-such does have cloak-like effects!

[Mr Bean]

Woah, that's actually frickin' cool. Cloaking devices, here we come! Though that's not what I'm looking for - I'm looking for chameleonic camouflage, not invisibility devices. And turns out I was right, fucking with the EM spectrum or some-such does have cloak-like effects!

The above device described by LoA would not make something invisible, simply change what you see. IE you would not see nothing, you would see a giant black spot were should exist something.

While that could be useful at night, simply devolping a sense that looks for "blacker than black" of the cloak would allow for easy detection.


And your camo so far has three things going for it.
1. Its simple
2. Its effective, its not magic invisa-wank its just adaptive camoflauge
3. Its half way believable

[Shroom Man 777]

Half-way believable? I actually think its within the realm of possibility, using nanotech or some fancy pantsy stuff to create artificial pigmentation hoo-hah. This is made even more believable since my sci-fi universe is set 500 years in the future.

[Lord of the Abyss]

The above device described by LoA would not make something invisible, simply change what you see. IE you would not see nothing, you would see a giant black spot were should exist something.

While that could be useful at night, simply devolping a sense that looks for "blacker than black" of the cloak would allow for easy detection.

Are you sure ? This

If made to oscillate at the correct frequency, the energy from the light is harvested by the plasmon and converted back to light, cancelling the light scattered by the object and rendering it "nearly invisible to an observer".

doesn't sound like the result would be blackness, although I'm not sure what it would be. It does sound like the light goes somewhere, however.

[Mr Bean]

doesn't sound like the result would be blackness, although I'm not sure what it would be. It does sound like the light goes somewhere, however.

Exactly, if your not reflecting light back to the observer, then the observer is going to see a blackspot were something should be, darkness is the absene of light. You see a black spot aginst a lighted background.

Put it this way, your the observer, I'll be wearing this light reflecting thing they are talking about. Look at this brick wall

Pretty eh?
Now imagin your looking at this brick wall,
Good, now I step infront of this brick wall with my light scattering device.
Your not going to see the wall anymore, or at least part of it, See I'm infront of it and the light that you would see as it bounces off the wall is being deflect by the device.

So your going to see Blackness, the light's not being reflected back at you and your eyes are not picking any of it up because of that.

[Mr Bean]

Half-way believable? I actually think its within the realm of possibility, using nanotech or some fancy pantsy stuff to create artificial pigmentation hoo-hah. This is made even more believable since my sci-fi universe is set 500 years in the future.

The only things that make it unlikley are power generation and keeping the nanobots "alive" to change patterns.

Keep in mind this is the military, those cloaks(For lack of a better term) are going to be sit on, stuffed into drawers, balled up and used as a pillow, lain on in the driving wind and rain, used as backup tarps and pretty much be in use for days on end.

So durability and power generation is a serious concern.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's not nanobots. It's nanotech, which could mean anything.

Basically, it's a thick camouflage paint. Thicker than normal. Maintenance? Well, if it gets scratched and shit, it becomes ugly and less effective. Like normal camouflage. But then when it becomes really ugly and ineffective, a new coat can be applied - like normal camouflage, except you won't change a perfectly good coat because that coat was green and your entering a desert battlefield.

Power generation? Cloaks? Cham Camo is meant to be applied to power suits and tanks and robots and futuristic humvees. While the civilian ones, which are applied to actual clothing, are just about as durable as the printed stuff/pictures found on shirts and stuff. Though maybe thicker, with a transparent layer of protective plastic or something.

As for how it works - I guess the computer could apply a series of electric pulses that force a reaction, making the chamo reflexively change colors. How the pulses are applied, what pattern, intensity, that stuff, determines the color/s.

But meh, even if its unbelievable, it IS a sci-fi universe set in the 26th century. With power suits, plasma guns, planetary shields, bear aliens, FTL, that stuff.

[Mr Bean]

It's not nanobots. It's nanotech, which could mean anything.

Basically, it's a thick camouflage paint. Thicker than normal. Maintenance? Well, if it gets scratched and shit, it becomes ugly and less effective. Like normal camouflage. But then when it becomes really ugly and ineffective, a new coat can be applied - like normal camouflage, except you won't change a perfectly good coat because that coat was green and your entering a desert battlefield.

Ok from the way you described it I got the vision in my head as acutal "adaptive" camoflauge, all sixteen or so camo patterns condensed into one matieral you can slap over-top just about anything.

Plus I had the vauge imagin in my mind of some Trooper leaping out of the back fo the plane hitting the ground, looking around then grabbing his wrist and with flair yelling, Go Go Autunm Forest Camo! Or prehaps a tank rolling off a transport in Adak while the tank commander stands in the turret and initates Go Go, Artic snowfield camo!
But I blaim that on lack of sleep, your one size fits all can of nano-paint is alot more plain jane.

As for how it works - I guess the computer could apply a series of electric pulses that force a reaction, making the chamo reflexively change colors. How the pulses are applied, what pattern, intensity, that stuff, determines the color/s.

I'm pretty sure that proccess is acutaly already copywrited in real life, bonus points for realism

But meh, even if its unbelievable, it IS a sci-fi universe set in the 26th century. With power suits, plasma guns, planetary shields, bear aliens, FTL, that stuff.

The Japanse have already built a power suit to help old people conquer the world, and we already have Bear aliens here on the board.

[Shroom Man 777]

Plus I had the vauge imagin in my mind of some Trooper leaping out of the back fo the plane hitting the ground, looking around then grabbing his wrist and with flair yelling, Go Go Autunm Forest Camo! Or prehaps a tank rolling off a transport in Adak while the tank commander stands in the turret and initates Go Go, Artic snowfield camo!
But I blaim that on lack of sleep, your one size fits all can of nano-paint is alot more plain jane.

Actually, that is right. The trooper/tank commander activates the Go Go Camo, which functions as a one size fits all nan-paint, and stuff.

I'm pretty sure that proccess is acutaly already copywrited in real life, bonus points for realism

Or the electric pulses stimulating the paint to adapt to the colors of the current environment. So if you're in a desert and suddenly run into a jungle oasis, you go "Go Go Jungle camo!" and ZAP, your camo starts transmogrifying from yellowish brownish desert camo to greenish fatigue stuff.

The Japanse have already built a power suit to help old people conquer the world, and we already have Bear aliens here on the board.

How about bear aliens in power suits?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The physics article won't work. It only applies to a single frequency, so you either try and block one wavelength or nothing at all. It won't make you invisible and only really works on small objects of a uniform shape anyway.

The best way is to use therm-optics as created in the Ghost In The Shell universe. Essentially, a special polymer suit is made that has either a special reactive paint layer or fibre optics or LCDs that can be altered in colour and light intensity. Assuming you have the processing power and the suit has many optical sensors dotted around it to detect local colours and light levels, you could have a suit or vehicle that mimics the surroundings in 3-D and does so quite well, assuming it produces the correct colours and lighting.

This is great for deceiving the Mark I Eyeball, but IR would be another issue. There is a British company that has created full body suits that trap practically all IR emissions. It's a special metal-polymer sandwich layer that is quite flexible, but also able to stop heat escaping. This would nullify thermal-imaging systems, but the user would get quite hot and the skin system changing colour would likely produce some heat too.

This could work for allowing better recce missions or even be used for civilian applications such as having cockpits that show you everything outside in real-time as if the place was one big glass ball. But it's the most feasible idea you'll have short of bending light around you (which means you not seeing either).

[Pu-239]

Some variation of this might be useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper, if you can make it durable enough. Needs no power to keep image up-

[Antares]

The only real camouflage thing i can some up with is this:
http://projects.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pr ... xv/oc.html

[Sea Skimmer]

Explain it away as some sort of highly advanced flexible projection material with the power sources and picture threads spread far enough apart as to be no brighter than standard human. Toss in an option heat reflective underlayer for anti-thermal work.

Reflecting heat inward would make the suit an excellent way to cook your troops alive.

[Rocker5150]

I remember seeing a show about police techniques and equipment. It had a dramatization where they were going to raid a little house where some criminals were hiding. The house was surrounded by open grassy fields, and the agents neded to covertly move a SWAT/police vehicle in place. It had been painted or covered in some special material that basically 'captured' the image of the landscape behind the truck, and showed it on the side facing the house. As it moved across the field, you could not see it from the hideout! While not totally invisible, from a distance it definatly worked.


-Kevin

[Crayz9000]

The only sensible way I can think of to get rid of IR signature (besides letting it radiate out in a dispersed fashion) would be to transfer heat via heat pipes into massive heatsinks in the boots, which would then dump the heat into the ground.

The only problem with that is that the ground would then radiate the heat, making a nice set of IR footprints...

[Sea Skimmer]

The best defence against infrared sensors is the smoke screen. Special infrared obscurant smoke is now quite common in the world, and highly effective. Lay down a barrage of it and all the enemy will see is a solid wall of heat.

[Lord of the Abyss]

The only sensible way I can think of to get rid of IR signature (besides letting it radiate out in a dispersed fashion) would be to transfer heat via heat pipes into massive heatsinks in the boots, which would then dump the heat into the ground.

The only problem with that is that the ground would then radiate the heat, making a nice set of IR footprints...

Well I mentioned this :

You might give your forces stealthed heat sinks - either they project heat away from likely observers, or they have some sort of limited heat storage ability.

I know I've read somewhere a story with IR stealth that uses the second option - the heat is dumped in a substance with a really high heat capacity; as long as it lasts you produce no IR image. The first idea I came up with on my own.

The best defence against infrared sensors is the smoke screen. Special infrared obscurant smoke is now quite common in the world, and highly effective. Lay down a barrage of it and all the enemy will see is a solid wall of heat.

That's ok if the idea is to keep the enemy from localizing or targeting you, but not so good if the goal is stealth.

[SyntaxVorlon]

It seems to me that you could probably be able to do something simple like have a sort of cloth that changes color based on the amount and frequency of light that is hitting it. So it's camo like we have now, but it's smarter camo. You could probably be damn near invisible in an environment with lots of cover, and it could be general issue, not just desert or jungle camo.